


Flirting With Disaster

by charleybradburies



Category: The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Book 3: Mockingjay, Character Development, Comfort/Angst, Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, District 13, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Female Relationships, Female-Centric, Femslash, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mockingjay Spoilers, My First Work in This Fandom, No Dialogue, No Plot/Plotless, Not A Fix-It, Not Prime Time, POV Female Character, Post-Canon, Post-Mockingjay, Realization, Reflection, Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:57:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4288149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charleybradburies/pseuds/charleybradburies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re a ragtag sort of family, they are, and at the end of the day, they all know they’re never going to make up for what they’ve all lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flirting With Disaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merle_p](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/gifts).



> Title from the song of the same name by Young Beautiful in a Hurry, on the soundtrack for SYFY's Defiance (Season 1).
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments, etc. are appreciated.

Fearsome, she’d been. Feared, she was. Fearful, she is.

Johanna’s full of fear and dread and grief, rail-thin and heavy with her burdens, Effie knows. All muscle and bone and rage, beautiful in the same way an explosion can be, when it’s done right, when all the elements are enmeshed in such a way that you can look at the blast and see the tangerine and bubblegum sunset steadfast beyond it. She’s skin and bones, but you’d never think her broken, let alone frail.

But she _is_ broken, and her heart _is_ frail, sometimes.

It’s not difficult to tell she cares, now that they’ve all gotten close, now that her body language is in all their dictionaries, but it’s only slightly more difficult to tell that she can’t help feeling like there’s nothing left for her. They’re a ragtag sort of family, they are, and at the end of the day, they all know they’re never going to make up for what they’ve all lost. Haymitch and Effie can’t replace the parents of their small horde of tributes, nor can Johanna be Prim or Rue. Katniss is not Annie, and Finnick, none of Peeta’s brothers. 

But they _are_ all each other has, now. 

And even though that is all they can be, that _is_ what they are: a _family,_ and somewhere along the way they've all come to better grips with it than they'd expected after the Games, after the revolution, all the twists and turns of events that had gotten them here. They've adapted to their circumstances - as do all the organisms which survive, which is not only scientific fact but one of the myriad excuses for the Games, and thus fodder for flashbacks. For the trauma they faced simply by waking up, the heartbreak that is the world they inhabit. 

Their worlds were always full of heartbreak, of hatred, of heat rising from the ashes of homes and lives and livelihoods; this world, though, overflowed with it. There was no way to hide, not even for Effie. She was known for her cheer, her tender care to herself, her dedication to the appearances she kept up, balled up, and threw away, but there was nothing to keep up here, not now - nothing but walls, nothing but the lightest hint of spirit that resided beneath the tiers of their hearts. Nothing but the haunted looks they all wear, the empty frowns, empty smiles and sweet nothings, that semblance of _life,_ the terminology they insist on using to describe their existence, if only for the littlest bit of hope. _Life._ They were, supposedly, the fittest, who'd survived, but it was hard to know what truth or worth there _was_ to that concept, let alone knowledge of it. 

The previously demolished District, the only one that held a single breath anymore, any shred of the nation Panem once had been...to her, little more than technology, dirt, ashes and sparks. 

But the sparks, _oh,_ the sparks: to see Katniss wield her fire as though she still were on a crusade, to see Peeta faithfully standing by, being the one needed to pinch out her sparks when they threatened to roll into thunderous anger, to quell...to stop the nightmares that sent her in frenzies and the grief that tore her heart from her body again and again. To hear Haymitch laughing. To see Coin, Cressida, all the world that was left, at the forefront of whatever it was they could become. _That_ was what Effie woke up for nowadays. 

That, and _Johanna._

Johanna, in particular, in a way Effie'd never cared for anyone before, never even _thought_ to, a manner and context that unwound her in many senses of the word, that put a different sort of spark in each of the women than they'd had before: explosive, resilient, and desirous. 

It was the sort of spark that could make one see the sky itself differently sometimes, the sort that turned any look whether fleeting or lingering, any roughly delivered compliment, into something so, so... _different._

A soft touch at a wrist swelled to hands exploring without discretion or deliberation; desperate and curious hands led to watering mouths; and watering mouths insisted on traveling to aching clits and dripping cunts, to sweaty nights, to feverish, risky departures to darkened hallways, and to an upsurge in disregard for external circumstances and often, expectations. 

District 13 had confidence in some medicinal approaches to easing one's pervasive hollowness, but just as Haymitch and often Katniss found some relief in drowning between sips from glass bottles, nothing seemed to keep either Johanna or Effie somewhat sane quite like each other did. A hot shower could ease the aches of muscles, but with kisses - and, for lack of a better description in Effie's vocabulary, technical assistance - figured into the mix, it could start to truly feel like _healing._ Like maybe _they_ were healing, like they'd someday be _whole_ again. Effie was not betting that they would ever really feel whole, but the chance they'll remain each others' comfort for some incredible, immeasurable length of time is equally salubrious and heartening, and in a nearly unprecedented turn of hopes, Effie _doesn't_ feel like she's settling for less than she wants or deserves in realizing that. 

Even before District 13, she'd never have doubted that there were worlds beneath any surface - there was practically another person inside her own skin sometimes, she was all too familiar with the concept; but _with_ the District, with so much lost and so little gained, she _couldn't_ deny that there was no longer much benefit to letting another version of her carry around her body. With no legitimate reason to cover herself up anymore, to hide her discontent, her worries, her loneliness, the Effie Trinket that District 13 saw, that Katniss and Haymitch understood, that Johanna _knew,_ wasn't just literally a world away from the Effie Trinket who had so brightly traversed the continent in high fashion and feigned ignorance, but a world away from that Effie in her heart, too. 

And to have realized that it was very much the same for Johanna, that her anger, too, was a stew of her righteousness and her grief, that the stunning, ferocious woman the cameras had been allowed to capture, was only a glimpse at one picture in the photo album that could be filled by facets of Johanna Mason - the woman who felt so much shame she felt none at all, who bore so much pain she can face anything that comes her way, who has so little trust to begin with but _somehow_ finds a way to place it in the most unlikely allies she's ever had, who've become her friends and family and lover. 

To Effie, that ever-growing photo album is worth the world.


End file.
